Ian Irvine - Alchymist

"'He may. So Vithis will track the amplimet and eventually discover that you came here. I won't be able to hold him back.'

'I'd better get going,' said Tiaan. 'I was expecting that. And, of course, the Well of Echoes—'

'It's stable now. I had a painful struggle after you left, before I tamed it, and more than once I thought it was going to defeat me. But what the amplimet did once, it may do again, and more quickly. It may have grown stronger too. Tell me, did it communicate with any other nodes?'

'Yes, at Nyriandiol and Snizort. But not since the Snizort node exploded.'

'I heard about that,' said Malien, shaking her head. 'Was it a unique problem, with that node, or might all nodes be at risk? I must take advice on the matter.’

'Is it safe for me to stay till the morning?' Tiaan said wistfully. 'I so long to sleep in a bed and not be afraid of what's out in the dark, hunting me. I've not felt secure since I left here.'

'You may sleep in perfect ease. In the morning we'll leave Tirthrax for somewhere safer.'

'You're coming with me?' Tiaan could not keep the joy out of her voice.

'Someone has to look after you,' Malien said dryly. 'Go up.

Your old room is ready and I've laid out clean clothes for you.'

How did you know I was coming?'

Vithis sent a skeet, ordering me to hold you if you came back. And indeed, where else could you have gone?'

'Where are we going?'

'To my own people, though I'm uncertain of the welcome either you or I will get there. Bathe and rest in security. I'll keep watch, if that comforts you. We're going to Stassor in the morning.'

Tiaan took out the amplimet, the other crystal, the helmet and the tesseract, and did as she was bade.

Malien woke Tiaan only minutes before dawn. To Tiaan's surprise, she was ushered into a different construct, which Malien had repaired during Tiaan's absence. Tiaan reached for the controls, discovered they were completely unfamiliar, and drew back. Malien motioned Tiaan into the seat beside her, took hold of a padded yoke and the machine lifted smoothly into the air.

'It flies!' Tiaan exclaimed.

'What we did together last winter rekindled my longstanding interest in the secret of flight. I feel quite rejuvenated.'

'Where did you find another amplimet?'

'I didn't. I use the Art in an entirely different way, if you recall. I've done so all my life. I found my own path to controlling a thapter.'

Tiaan was stunned. 'How long have you had this one working?'

'Three months, more or less, though I've tinkered with it nearly every day, improving it in various ways. Learning how to make your thapter fly was the hard part. Once we'd discovered that secret, making another was easy.'

'You once said you only had a minor talent for such work.'

'I dissembled. I've a very considerable talent, although for most of my life I've avoided using it.'

'Why, Malien?'

'You don't know your Histories well, do you?'

'Not of your time.'

'When I was young . . , well, younger, at any rate, I was partner to Tensor, a brilliant man but one whose obsession led the world to the abyss. The war, and the invasion by the lyrinx that led to it, arose out of his folly. Because he was obsessed with devices, I swore not to use my talent, and for more than two hundred years I have not.'

'And now?'

'Times change, and so must we, to suit them. Not using my talent for the cause I believe in would be just as great a folly.'

'Does Urien know about your thapter?'

'No. I had warning of her messengers, so I made sure it looked innocuous. Even had they gone inside, they could not have flown it. It's designed to be controlled by my mind, and mine alone.'

'What if I were to put in my amplimet?' said Tiaan forlornly. She'd thought, after coming to Tirthrax, that she might obtain another set of carbon whiskers and diamond crystals, and make her construct fly.

'I wouldn't want to risk my life that way. Should it become necessary, I'll make changes so you can fly it.'

Passing through the entrance, which was hung with blue icicles as long as Tiaan was tall, Malien turned the thapter over the great Tirthrax glacier and followed it, winding up into the high mountains, until the air grew so thin that Tiaan's every breath was an effort. Malien did not seem to be troubled, but she had lived in the mountains all her life. It grew bitterly cold, even with the hatch closed.

'Go below,' the Aachim said. 'Pull out the bunk at the rear. It's warmer there.'

Tiaan did so. It lay directly above the mechanism that drove the thapter but, even so, wrapped in blankets, Tiaan was cold. She lay down and closed her eyes, fretting. All the Tirthrax Aachim had gone to Stassor the year before last, to a great meeting about the war. Only Malien had remained in Tirthrax. Though she was venerated as a hero from the Histories, her own people did not trust her. She had not been welcome at their meet, so how could Tiaan be?

Stassor lay within the great mountain chain that ran down the eastern side of Lauralin, from beyond Tiksi in the south, all the way to the north-easternmost tip of the continent at Taranta. In a straight line, Stassor was about two hundred and forty leagues from Tirthrax, but they could not travel in a straight line.

First they had to cross the Great Mountains, which were so high that not even Malien could breathe at their summits. She had to travel a winding course along glacier-filled valleys, with bare ridges as sharp as flakes of flint towering above them on either side, and then across the high plateau, the most inhospitable environment in the world. That rugged land was perpetually sheathed in ice. Nothing grew there. Nothing could have lived there, unless it had crept out of the void through some dark aperture when the Way between the Worlds was open, and delved deep into the underlying rock to suck at the warmth, and brood.

Malien dawdled, as if no more anxious to reach Stassor than Tiaan was. She ventured up every icy valley to its vantage point, sometimes only travelling for an hour or two before stopping to spend the rest of the day at some spectacular lookout, wrapped in her blankets and silently taking in the scene. It felt like a farewell journey, a final visit to everything that was beautiful and unspoiled. The trip took twenty-one days, though only after fifteen had passed did Tiaan shake free from the helpless terror that had controlled her life since Gilhaelith had been taken from ooreah Ngurle many months ago. For the first time she felt safe. Who would not, with Malien looking after them? No one could have tracked them across this wasteland. No construct could cross the Great Mountains. They were impassable on foot, by any land conveyance and even by air-floaters, since the lowest passes were higher than such machines could rise.

Malien did not question Tiaan about the intervening months, though she did show an unexpected interest in Gilhaelith. 'Where did he come from, do you think?'

'Somewhere on Meldorin. He would not talk about his past, more than I've told you.'

'An interesting man,' said Malien. 'And not entirely old human, surely. I wonder what his lineage is?'

'What do you mean?' said Tiaan.

"To have lived so long, surely he must have blood of the longer-lived species in him — Aachim or Faellem, or even Charon.'

Tiaan had not thought about that. 'But mancers can lengthen their own lives.'

'More lose their lives in the attempt than survive it, so it's attempted less often than you might imagine. And even at its best it rarely returns them to their youth. A hale middle age is the most that can be expected. For the unfortunate, however, it means death, or worse.'

'What could be worse?'

'Ending up as a monstrosity with your body parts in the wrong places, begging for release and being unable to find it.'